Hong Kong | February 11, 2026 - Psy Protocol today announced that it has achieved 521,000 transactions per second (TPS) in a live, chain-verifiable proof-of-work network. The team stated that this result surpasses the publicly benchmarked performances of all mainstream proof-of-stake and proof-of-work chains to date, without sacrificing decentralization, security, or privacy.
This stress test was conducted on thousands of Google Cloud instances to simulate a high-concurrency, internet-scale operating environment. Each transaction in the benchmark was supported by cryptographic proofs, and the complete dataset has been published for independent verification.
To demonstrate confidence in the results, Psy Protocol has publicly established a reward of $100,000 for anyone able to demonstrate the invalidity of this throughput result based on the published evidence.
"This is not a development network demonstration nor a theoretical estimate," said Carter Feldman, founder and CEO of Psy Protocol. "Every result can be verified. If we are wrong, the math will prove it - and we will pay $100,000 to the person who proves it."
Why 521,000 TPS Matters Now
High throughput benchmarks are not uncommon in the cryptocurrency industry. Psy Protocol believes that this result holds significant structural implications, particularly in relation to the use case scenarios it addresses.
Blockchains were originally designed around human transaction patterns: sporadic activities, manual approvals, and lower concurrency. However, as millions of autonomous AI agents continuously transact, collaborate, and settle at machine speed in the future, this model is becoming increasingly mismatched.
When networks designed for human-scale use encounter sustained machine-level demands, the outcome often results in network congestion, skyrocketing fees, and cascading bottlenecks. Psy Protocol views 521,000 TPS as the "baseline" for the infrastructure needed in machine-native economies, rather than a performance ceiling.
How the Architecture Works
Most blockchains require each node to re-execute every transaction, which imposes a hard ceiling on throughput architecturally. Psy Protocol removes this bottleneck through four complementary design choices:
- Parallel State Architecture (PARTH): Each user operates within isolated state partitions. This eliminates global state contention, allowing thousands of state transitions to be processed simultaneously without conflict.
- Client-side Proof Generation: Transaction execution and proof generation occur on the user’s device, with sensitive data always under user control. Miners are only responsible for verifying and aggregating proofs, not re-executing transactions, thereby eliminating redundant calculations across the network.
- Recursive Zero-Knowledge Proofs: Proofs of individual transactions are recursively folded into a concise proof for each block. As transaction volume grows, verification costs increase logarithmically rather than linearly, which means that significant throughput increases do not necessitate a proportional increase in verification resources.
- Horizontal Scaling via Realms: The network scales by adding parallel processing domains (“Realms”) and proof aggregation capabilities. Throughput will increase linearly with the growth of infrastructure, rather than being limited by a fixed architectural ceiling.
Psy Protocol indicates that 521,000 TPS reflects the results under the current test configuration; higher throughput can be achieved by scaling parallel proof generation capabilities.
Verification Method: Open Data That Can Be Verified on Consumer-Grade Hardware
Since verification relies on concise recursive proofs rather than full re-execution, Psy Protocol states that any combination of proofs in the benchmark can be independently verified on consumer-grade hardware - including limited-performance devices, such as Raspberry Pi.
The complete testing methodology, ZK circuit data, and composable proofs have all been open-sourced, accessible at:
Feasible Scenarios at This Scale
Under sustained throughput exceeding 500,000 TPS, the following new types of on-chain activities will become feasible:
- High-frequency micropayments between autonomous agents
- Continuous clearing markets replacing discrete batch settlements with real-time settlement
- High-density collaboration among large-scale AI agent groups operating without human intervention
- Keyless agent operation via programmable signature circuits, eliminating the reliance on human-controlled private keys or third-party custodians
About Psy Protocol
Psy Protocol is building a proof-of-work smart contract platform aimed at the "agentic internet." Its architecture combines the security and decentralization advantages of proof-of-work with the throughput and cost efficiency historically associated with proof-of-stake systems. Psy employs a "Proof-of-Useful-Work (PoUW)" consensus model, where miners perform work with cryptographic productivity - specifically aggregating and verifying zero-knowledge proofs - rather than solving arbitrary hashing puzzles.
免责声明：本文章仅代表作者个人观点，不代表本平台的立场和观点。本文章仅供信息分享，不构成对任何人的任何投资建议。用户与作者之间的任何争议，与本平台无关。如网页中刊载的文章或图片涉及侵权，请提供相关的权利证明和身份证明发送邮件到support@aicoin.com，本平台相关工作人员将会进行核查。
